Big Sur fire: Condors safe for now, but biologists watch nervously

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File - In this July 21, 2012 file photo, released by the Ventana Wildlife Society shows a condor in flight in Big Sur, Calif. A live-streaming camera will broadcast the release of four endangered California condors into the Big Sur wilderness on Tuesday, March 25, 2014, showing the birds transitioning from captivity to the wild for the first time. (AP Photo/Ventana Wildlife Society, Tim Huntington, File)

Courtesy Ventana Wildlife Society) Condors perch in the condor recovery area operated by the Ventana Wildlife Society. To the right, smoke from the approaching "Soberanes" wildland fire can be seen. The fire is causing concern for biologists since the fire is burning through the area of Big Sur where the large, majestic birds nest and mate. This is a screen grab from the "condor cam" on the Ventana Wildlife Society website.

As fires continue to burn across Big Sur, flames and heavy smoke are threatening not just homes and businesses, but also some of the area’s most famous residents: dozens of endangered California condors.

Biologists who have spent years painstakingly nurturing North America’s largest bird back from the brink of extinction say so far none of the 82 condors that live in the Big Sur area has been killed by the Soberanes Fire.

But the blaze — which began two weeks ago with an illegal campfire and by Friday had charred 53,900 acres, an area nearly twice the size of San Francisco — already has destroyed one of the six stations south of Carmel where researchers leave dead animals for condors to eat.

Having already burned across 14 miles, the fire is moving slowly south across coastal Monterey County toward rugged, remote sections of the Los Padres National Forest. Its leading edge Friday was about eight miles from three nests containing young condor chicks, as well as an important “condor sanctuary” site with pens, trailers and a cabin that scientists use to release condors that have been hatched in zoos.

“I am worried,” said Kelly Sorenson, executive director of the Ventana Wildlife Society, the nonprofit group that helps lead condor recovery efforts in Big Sur. “Just because we had a few chicks in wild nests survive wildfires in the past doesn’t mean it will happen again. It’s definitely a concern.”

Sorenson said biologists are hoping they won’t need to go in and rescue the young birds from the nests. The chicks, which are 3- to 4-months-old, are being fed by their parents and won’t be able to fly on their own for another two or three months, he said.

“At this point it wouldn’t make sense to pull the chicks out of the nests because we’d have to figure out how to raise them,” Sorenson said. “We might do it as a last resort. We are going to be watching day by day.”

California condors, whose wingspans can reach 9 feet, once ranged from British Columbia to Mexico. But because of habitat loss, hunting and lead poisoning, the majestic birds’ population dwindled to just 22 nationwide by 1982. In a desperate gamble to stave off extinction, federal biologists captured all remaining wild condors in 1987 and began breeding them in zoos. The birds’ offspring have been gradually released back into the wild.

Today, things are looking up for the condor.

As of Dec. 31, there were 435 California condors in the world, an increase of nearly 20-fold over the past 30 years. Of those, 268 live in the wild, and 167 live in captivity in places where they are bred and hatched, such as the San Diego Zoo, Los Angeles Zoo, Oregon Zoo and World Center for Birds of Prey in Boise, Idaho.

The wild condors live in Central California, where 82 birds split their time between Big Sur and Pinnacles National Park in San Benito County; in Southern California, mostly around Ventura and Santa Barbara counties; in the Grand Canyon and Utah; and in Baja, Mexico.

Last year, for the first time since the recovery effort began, more condors were born in the wild, 14, than died in the wild, 12. Scientists say that is an important milepost in their goal of one day removing the birds from the endangered species list, as has been done with other iconic species such as the bald eagle, gray whale, American alligator and peregrine falcon.

Condors evolved with fire as a natural part of the landscape, said Steve Kirkland, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Ventura.

“There have been birds lost in past fires, but most of the birds that are mobile will fly away,” said Kirkland, field coordinator for the California Condor Recovery Program. “If the fire came upon them suddenly with erratic winds, say early in the morning or late at night, that would be a riskier time. But this is a relatively slow-moving fire. Hopefully they will get out of the area if they sense danger.”

Two adult condors disappeared in the 2008 Basin Complex Fire, a lightning-caused blaze that burned 162,818 acres in Big Sur. Their transmitters were never found, Sorenson said, leading researchers to believe they may have been overcome by smoke or flames. In that same blaze, fire burned around a redwood tree where a condor chick was living in a nest. The bird survived. Researchers nicknamed it Phoenix, and today it is still flying as an adult along the Big Sur coast.

Although the fire — which on Friday was 40 percent contained, having destroyed 57 homes — will scorch some condor habitat, Kirkland noted that the birds fly up to 100 miles a day and have plenty of other areas to look for food until the grass, brush and other animals return.

“They forage over such a wide area that it’s probably not a significant factor,” he said.

One challenge in tracking the condors, however, is that only about 20 percent of the Big Sur birds are fitted with GPS tags. The tags are much more precise than radio transmitters, allowing scientists to track the speed, elevation and exact location minute-by-minute of the birds. But they cost $4,000 each, compared with only $200 for the radio transmitters all of the birds are equipped with. So the Ventana Wildlife Society has been unable to afford the GPS tags for all the birds.

Kirkland and Sorenson both said that despite the current fire risk, lead poisoning remains the main threat of condor deaths. Condors are scavengers and eat deer, wild pigs, ground squirrels and other animals that hunters or ranchers may have shot, ingesting lead fragments.

In 2013, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law banning all lead ammunition in hunting in California starting in 2019. Sorenson’s group has handed out $100,000 in non-lead ammunition to ranchers and hunters around the Big Sur-Pinnacles area since then. That, he said, has resulted in a decline in lead poisoning deaths in recent years.

For hikers and tourists wondering if the Big Sur fires have caused more condors to move inland: Apparently that’s not the case.

“We’re definitely getting smokier air. But in terms of the birds behavior we’re not seeing any changes,” said Rachel Wolstenholme, condor program manager at Pinnacles National Park. “Some days there might be 40 here, and some days there might be zero. On most days you have a 50-50 chance of seeing a condor.”

Paul Rogers has covered a wide range of issues for The Mercury News since 1989, including water, oceans, energy, logging, parks, endangered species, toxics and climate change. He also works as managing editor of the Science team at KQED, the PBS and NPR station in San Francisco, and has taught science writing at UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz.